Fire danger: Very high

KRSN relocates its broadcast antennae

Employees from Johnson Controls Northern New Mexico's Utilities Department erect a 90-foot pole near the intersection of NM 4 and Pajarito Road where radio station KRSN's broadcast anntennae now is mounted. The station's copper wire antennae was pre-assembled on the pole before it was erected. The cherry picker was used to secure the wire on the pole. The Lab, JCNNM, Department of Energy and Los Alamos County worked to ensure that KRSN could continue broadcasting in Los Alamos and White Rock via the temporary location. KRSN is the county's emergency broadcast station. Photo by Mike Kolb, Community Relations (CRO) Office

During last month's Cerro Grande Fire, Los Alamos radio station KRSN was the eyes and ears of the conflagration that left more than 400 families homeless.

At an all employee meeting last month and in a subsequent "thank-you" celebration, Laboratory Director John Browne publicly thanked the station for its news coverage.

So last Friday when the station had to find a new location for its broadcast antennae, the Lab, Johnson Controls Northern New Mexico and Los Alamos County sprang into action.

The Lab's Community Relations (CRO) Office received a call last Friday requesting assistance for KRSN. Its tower had been located on private land on North Mesa, explained Bob Clark of the AM radio station.

Less than two hours later, personnel in Facilities and Waste Operations' Utilities and Infrastructure (FWO-UI), working with JCNNM, had located a 90-foot pole. By 7:30 that evening, the pole was erected on Department of Energy owned land northwest of the intersection of NM 4 and Pajarito Road.

"We supplied everything. It was kind of a unique thing because we generally don't get requests at 3 p.m. on a Friday afternoon ... ," said Jerry Forte of JCNNM's Utilities Department.

Noting that KRSN is Los Alamos County's emergency broadcast station, Forte said, "We jumped right on it."

The pole is buried 11-feet deep at the site and the station's copper wire antenna was mounted on the pole at a height of 79 feet.

"DOE came through for us at the last minute and made this property available for our use," said KRSN's Clark. "The actions of personnel at the Lab, the DOE and the county made it possible for the station to remain in Los Alamos."

A permanent tower will be built on the site shortly.

--Steve Sandoval

Volunteers needed Saturday for fire rehabilitation

Los Alamos County needs 500 volunteers Saturday to help with fire rehabilitation efforts, said Al Toth, head of the volunteer rehabilitation project for the county. Anyone wishing to assist should show up at the LA County Library parking lot at 8 a.m. Saturday.

For safety reasons volunteers must wear lace-up hiking or military boots, long pants and long-sleeved shirts. Bright colors should be avoided to deter wasps. The work to be done includes raking, seeding and mulching. Hardhats, gloves and tools will be provided, but if you have stiff-toothed garden rakes and/or canteen-type containers please bring them. Work shifts are approximately four hours long so sunscreen is highly recommended.

For those without hiking boots, the county also has indicated that it needs 15 to 20 people to provide administrative help Saturday for such things as registration as well as handing out equipment and water. Those interested in this type of work should be at the library around 7:30 to 7:45 a.m. Two hundred people also are needed to work in White Rock filling sandbags. Those interested in sandbag work should report to Overlook Park at field number 3 at 8 a.m.

While there may be other projects in the future, Toth says volunteers will be needed on Saturdays throughout the month of June in an effort to mitigate potential flooding problems before August when the monsoons arrive.

Deputy energy secretary to meet with fire victims today

Deputy Energy Secretary T.J. Glauthier will visit the Laboratory today for discussions related to the aftermath of the Cerro Grande fire and environmental remediation plans.

During his visit, Glauthier will talk with Laboratory employees and retirees who lost their homes in the fire. The meeting is scheduled from 2 to 2:55 p.m. in the Physics Building Auditorium.

Testimony provides information on management and impact of Cerro Grande fire on the Lab

On Wednesday, Richard Burick, deputy Laboratory director for operations, provided testimony to the National Parks and Public Lands Subcommittee and the Forest and Forest Health Subcommittee of the House Resources Committee. In his testimony, Burick reported on the management and impact of the Cerro Grande fire on the Laboratory. Click here for the complete transcript.

Emergency Rehabilitation Team provides third update

Protect human life

• Precautionary relocation of all personnel from Technical Area 41 continues.

Protect Laboratory facilities and infrastructure

• Johnson Controls Northern New Mexico personnel continue to cut down all severely burned and dead trees in Pajarito Canyon, between TA-18 and approximately one mile up the canyon. Removal of these trees is designed to reduce debris flows in case of flooding. Cut trees are being "high-stumped," meaning that they are cut three to four feet from the ground. High-stumping creates a natural trash rake that can reduce the amount of debris washing down in a flood. All felled trees are being removed from the canyon.
• Work continues on water and debris retention structures immediately upstream from TA-18.
• Crews will also remove silt and trees from a culvert in Pajarito Canyon west of Route 501. In Two-Mile Canyon, a team is also cleaning selected culverts east of Route 501. In particular, one fallen tree is blocking a 48-inch culvert.
• The Laboratory is ordering a sandbag machine that helps automate the creation of sandbags. The machine will allow for much more rapid sandbagging in contrast to manual methods.
• Laboratory personnel are training a pilot team of JCNNM workers in burned area rehabilitation efforts, including contour raking, seeding and mulching. After completing today's training, the team will start supervising larger crews of JCNNM personnel in rehabilitation efforts on selected portions of Laboratory land burned in the fire.

Minimize movement of contamination off of Laboratory property

• The Laboratory's Environmental Restoration Project personnel continue to conduct analysis and in-field verification of known contamination sites, called "potential release sites."
• Mitigation efforts continue for PRS that have already been identified and evaluated in the field. Additional details on mitigation efforts were provided in update number one (June 5).

Memorial service scheduled for former T Division director

George Irving Bell Jr., former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory's Theoretical (T) Division and at the forefront of the Laboratory's involvement in the human genome project, died May 28 in Los Alamos Medical Center. He was 73 years old.

A memorial service is scheduled for 10 a.m., June 25 in Fuller Lodge.

Born in August 1926 in Evanston, Ill., Bell earned his bachelor's degree in physics from Harvard in 1947 and his doctoral degree in theoretical physics in 1951 from Cornell University, where he studied with Hans Bethe.

Bell came to the then Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1951 joining T Division's effort to find a workable design for the first thermonuclear weapons. The crash program ordered by President Harry S. Truman was underway and most of T Division was involved in one way or another. It was in the highly cooperative atmosphere created by J. Carson Mark that Bell contributed strongly to solving the neutron transport problems that occupied the design community. In the next decade, he became heavily involved in reactor physics, co-authoring, with Samuel Glasstone, the definitive text on the subject and winning a distinguished award from the American Nuclear Society.

In the 1960s, Bell was one of small group of physicists at Los Alamos who began to work seriously in biology. He focused on immunology and in 1970 published a seminal paper formulating a quantitative immunological model that could be computationally explored. In the following three decades, his own work and his leadership in attracting and mentoring a number of younger scientists made the Theoretical Biology and Biophysics group in T Division, a group he lead from 1974 to 1990, the leading center for theoretical immunology and cell biology.

Bell also encouraged and made possible the development of other aspects of theoretical biology in the group, notably molecular biology and genetics. When, in the mid-1980s, Los Alamos undertook an exploration of the possibility of mapping and sequencing of the entire human genome, Bell was an active participant. This work set in motion what is now the Human Genome Program. As the Human Genome Program became a major national enterprise, Bell led in establishing a key role for the laboratory.

In 1962, Bell took a leave of absence from Los Alamos to be a visiting lecturer in applied physics at Harvard University. And in 1979, he again took a leave of absence from Los Alamos to study immunology and cell biology with theoretician Niels Jerne at the Basel Institute of Immunology in Basel, Switzerland.

Bell authored more than 100 publications, often formulating new theoretical approaches to biological problems.

In 1988, in addition to serving as T Division leader, Bell took on the duties of acting director of the Center for Human Genome Studies at Los Alamos. He held both these posts while simultaneously continuing as group leader of Los Alamos' Theoretical Biology and Biophysics Group. A year later, Bell was named a Laboratory Senior Fellow. Bell retired from Los Alamos in February 1990 but returned as a Laboratory associate and continued in this capacity until last September.

"He was a terrific role model both as a scientist and as a person. Though low-key, he was very strong and he never did anything half-way," said Walter Goad, a colleague and close family friend of Bell's.

"He had a breadth of learning that spanned much of biology and physics," Goad continued.

A world-class mountain climber, Bell was part of a team that, in 1953, attempted a climb of K-2 , the second highest mountain in the world. In the annals of climbing, the saga of this expedition has endured as a classic example of a team of climbers placing the wellbeing of an individual above the ambitions of the group. It is also remembered because a single person, Peter Schoening, arrested the fall of five of his comrades, including George Bell, saving them all. This near escape did not diminish Bell's love for climbing and in 1960, he made a first ascent of 25,000-foot Masherbrum in the Himalayas. He also made first ascents of two high peaks in the Peruvian Andes.

Bell was a leader in training young climbers in Los Alamos and one of the founders of the Los Alamos Mountaineers. "He was a leading light. He inspired many young climbers," Goad said of Bell.

Bell was a member of the select American Alpine Club.

"He was passionately attached to the natural world; he and his wife were expert at all the crafts of wilderness travel," said Goad.

Bell is survived by his wife, Ginny, of Los Alamos, whom he married in 1956; children, George Jr. and Carolyn Bell-Prince; grandchildren Kaitlin Prince, Austin Prince and Derek Prince; Allison Bell and Henry Bell; and sister Barbara Bell of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Lab wins prestigious award for recycling program

The Laboratory has won a White House award for its recycling program for junk mail and other recyclable paper products.

Federal Environmental Executive Fran McPoland presented the 2000 Closing the Circle Award during a ceremony at the Old Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to the Lab for its Mail Stop A1000 Junk Mail Recycling Program, run jointly by the Business Operations (BUS) and Environmental Science and Waste Technology (E) divisions.

"It is an incredible honor to receive such a distinguished award from the White House, and I congratulate everyone involved for a wonderful job in making the program an unqualified success worthy of national recognition," said recycling program developer Anthony R. Garcia of Mail Services (BUS-4). Dianne Wilburn of E Division also helped develop the program.

This is the first time that the Laboratory has won such an award, which recognizes federal employees and facilities for successful waste reduction programs in such categories as waste prevention, recycling, purchasing recycled products, environmental preferability, model facility demonstration and sowing the seeds for change. DOE submitted the Los Alamos program to the White House for consideration.

"The junk mail recycling program is one of our biggest pollution prevention success stories," said Jan Watson, solid and sanitary waste project leader for the Environmental Stewardship Office (E-ESO). "We're very proud of these folks who truly deserve this kind of recognition."

The Mail Stop A1000 Junk Mail Recycling Program began in early 1998. Through it, Lab employees send their unwanted junk mail, transparencies, books, magazines, binders, colored paper, catalogs and other recyclable products to the specially designated A1000 mail address onsite. Mailroom staff also collect these items daily while delivering mail.

After sorting the waste, the Lab ships it to various recycling centers statewide, saving about 15 to 20 percent compared to the cost of shipping it to the local landfill, said Watson.

As a result of the program, about 20 metric tons of waste is recycled each month, helping the Laboratory meet waste reduction and recycling requirements specified in the DOE/University of California management contract.

ESO Program Manager Tom Starke said the Closing the Circle award is a national acknowledgement of the Lab's commitment to reducing waste wherever possible.

"The Mail Stop A1000 Program is one of several waste reduction and pollution prevention initiatives that Laboratory staff have implemented during the past few years," he said. "We hope that by winning this prestigious award, more and more people become aware of this institution's dedication to reducing waste and pollution at every stage of the process, from cradle to grave."

More information about the Mail Stop A1000 Program and other recycling programs at the Laboratory is available online at http://emeso.lanl.gov/info/recycling/list.htm#MSA1000.
Information about the Lab's pollution prevention initiatives also is online at http://emeso.lanl.gov/

Ternel N. Martinez

On today's bulletin board
Commuter's Corner | Parking areas around TA-3 | Parking shuttle routes (pdf) or jpeg
Microsoft Vision 2000 Presentation Wellness Center offers health promotion classes Found: ladies silver bead bracelet Tour de Los Alamos American Red Cross hosting Disaster Committee meeting Family Strengths Network classes Mesa Public Library host show of works by Ming Zi Ma Contract Associates is available now for furniture projects Los Alamos Little Theater is holding public readings Lost: silver ring with red carnelian stone Found: ladies wristwatch Plutonium Futures 2000 Conference Found: a silver and coral hook earing	TNT Los Alamos Track Club hosts track and field meet Tennis Club event and barbeque slated for June 10 Wellness Center offers class on backpacking conditioning, safety and nutrition Lost: gold ring YMCA planning climbing trip in Colorado Franklin Covey coming in July and Aug. Get a Computer Corner computer in three days American Nuclear Society dinner meeting June 16 Senior Scientist Institute nominations rescheduled Golf tournament scheduled to raise money for scholarships ASIS meetings scheduled